Whenever I mention I have published a few books, people tend to ask me how I got into writing. Was it that I just all of a sudden knew it was what I wanted to do or had I been planning to write for a long time? The truth is my journey started rather young and not in a million years did I think I would be doing what I’m doing now. Let’s begin shall we.

I started writing at the age of 10. Journal entries that are so cringy whenever I happen to pick the journal up to read an entry I think what a simple childhood I had. And also, can I go back to that simpler time? Yes, I still have my journals. I have kept them all. My first ever journal was a Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen journal. (I know that dates me, but I’m pretty sure we all know I’m old.)

Those journal entries soon blossomed from the everyday what happened in school or at practice to what if I had said or done something differently? How would my life, my story, have changed? Journal entries were no longer journal entries. I ignored my real life to instead dive into a fantasy world I had created. Where the boy I had a crush on did actually like me back. (I sound like Tina from Bob’s Burgers and her erotic friend fiction.)

I would scribble the night away and when my mom would come into my room to say goodnight, she would ask what I was writing about and I would quickly slam the journals shut and say she couldn’t read it. And the reason my mom would have an interest was because at the time she had recently started her book publishing journey.

When her first book was published, I used to go to her book signings a lot and watch in awe at how she could get people to stop and pick up her books as she explained the story with such an affection for her characters that it could convince total strangers to read her works. I saw the good and the bad. The people picking up the book, excited to purchase and the people who picked the book up only to place it back down and move on. I saw the good days when she sold a bunch of books and I saw the bad days when she didn’t sell any. But on both days the one thing I saw most was her resilience. And now almost 30 years later, and the cool ass title of being a NYT Best Seller, she still keeps putting herself and her amazing works out into the world.

I never thought I would be a published author. Sounds crazy as I have 4 Korean books, 1 romantasy book, and 1 short story published and out in the world, but up until I was about 20 years old all my writing, I kept to myself. And the only reason anyone saw my stories was when a college friend stole my journal one night because she wanted to know what I was writing. Yeah, not the best approach but when she came back with my journal in her hand she said, “I need to know what happens next.”

I was surprised I had drawn someone in like that, especially when I thought it was just brainstorming on paper. I continued to write and she continued to read. Once out of college I chose to anonymously put myself out there on the wonderful world of Wattpad. Yep. I was a fanfic writing girlie. I would reach out to all these other fan fic writers that I liked to beg them to read my stuff. Most of them ignored my messages but there were a few who responded and read my stories and ended up enjoying the things I wrote.

One of those people, who I still consider a friend, even inspired the romantasy book I have out now. Gray, if you read this, hope you’re doing well and thank you for letting me create #graykub!

Before that she helped me create a story on Wattpad. A story that was my one big success on the site. I had reached close to one million reads and people begging for new chapters faster than I could push them out. That was the first time I felt proud of my writing. And it was the first time I felt confident enough to share my writing with the one person who had always asked what it was I was writing.

When I showed my mom she started reading the first chapter and asked, “You wrote this?”

I nodded my head and she followed her question up with, “You need to publish this.”

And so, with a lot of help from my mom, I did. Now I won’t share this book or title with y’all because I am no longer proud of the book. However, I do plan to edit and restructure it so that down the road I will in fact put it back out into the world and share it with you once again.

 After that, I continued to write for myself. I had the thought, “Well I did it. I published a book. I can cross it off the bucket list.”

But the world would have much crazier plans for me.

When I got into K-dramas and K-pop I never thought it would bring me to where I am today. I started watching and decided I wanted to learn the language. And when I started I found the ‘normal’ way of learning really didn’t work for me. It was meant to be fun and engaging but I was bored and ended up losing interest fast.

I noticed that I was able to pick up words and phrases from watching the K-dramas I had become obsessed with and so I would repeat those and would speak the into a translator that would give me the 한글 .

And as I continued, I started writing again but my lead males became Korean. If they’re Korean, they will need to obviously speak Korean. That forced me to get cracking on my Korean. When I began to throw the words into the stories, I would leave myself footnotes on the pages. That was when I had the lightbulb moment. Other people could learn this way.

I had written most of Seoul Searching when I went to a writers’ conference and decided I would throw my hat into the pitching ring. Every single editor and agent said no. One even said “Why Korean? Who wants to learn Korean?”

While I was upset, it didn’t stop me. I instead said, “Fine. I’ll do it myself.”  Which is how this site, Korean From Context, was born. I would try and post chapters weekly, as well as build a blog about K-dramas I was watching (which I def want to get back into) and K-pop concerts I was attending (I would love to but this one might be tougher). All aspects of the site would try and teach Korean in a way that had you not even realizing you were learning.

How did this get me into the world of actually publishing my books? Glad you totally asked. I went to KCON in NYC in 2019 to cover it for this site. As I was sat in the press room with some other people making sure all my stuff was fully charged, I had a woman come and sit with us and happily started chatting and she asked who I wrote for. I went into a very long-winded story about my site and in my head I was screaming, “STOP TALKING AND ASK WHO SHE WRITES FOR!”

I finally did shut up and asked to which her response was, “Forbes.”

To say my jaw dropped is an understatement. But what she followed up with nearly had me fall back onto the floor because I had surely died.

She said, “I love the concept of your site, I would love to interview you for an article if that’s ok with you.”

IF  THAT’S OK WITH ME?!? Of course it was! And so she did. Korean From Context was featured on the Forbes website and she even asked when I planned to publish the book so she could write about it then as well. That got people to my Instagram and to my website where I had people begging for the next chapters and asking when it would be a book they could hold in their hands.

The plan was to release the book for a limited time, sell some preorders with special gifts, and call it a day. Once again, my ideas never seem to be what actually happens. Here we are a few years later, 4 books published and another who knows how many coming soon.

So yeah, that has been my writing journey thus far. I am so excited to see where it takes me next! And I hope you will continue to follow along!